Posted by Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media CounselFor some time now, we’ve been advocating for the formation of a group of technical experts to put forward their best thinking on how to manage broadband networks in ways that still preserve and promote an open Internet. We’ve worked closely with Verizon and others in the Internet sector to further develop the concept, and we’re excited by today’s announcement that the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group , or BITAG, has begun the process of formally launching.

To be clear, the BITAG is still very much a work in progress, and we welcome the involvement of other interested entities, especially those representing the Internet user community. Further, the purpose of the BITAG is not to replace the oversight and enforcement authority of the FCC or any other government body. Rather, we hope the BITAG can bring together some of the smartest technical minds in this space to provide some useful guidance to policymakers and Internet stakeholders alike.

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1) first articulates the general purpose nature of the Internet, including how "net neutrality" stems from and is supported by that (i.e., through application independence and interoperability across autonomous routers); and

2) then articulates how innovations like various notions for "Quality of Service" or types of network management will affect the general purpose character of the platform

This will keep clear what's at stake in the key respects, eliminate confusion, prevent misleading contention, and assure that tradeoffs are recognized rather than elided as various propositions are valorized on their own terms, rather than in relation to the essential characteristics the platform already provides to us.

A constructive role you can play in relation to ISOC/IETF would be to recommend language to be published under a "General Purpose Platform Impact" header in their open protocols, similarly to the present "Security Considerations" header. You can also provide the public opportunity to comment on language you propose in this connection.

Two names who should be invited to take part in this group: David Reed, John Waclawski

A helpful framing -- specifically attentive to the problem that the "net neutrality" issue elicits in relation to standards and the process of standardsmaking -- can be found in the legislative proposal by the Dynamic Platform Standards Project, available here .

I am a big fan of Net Neutrality, With ISP's being owned by content producers or distributors there is far too much temptation for them to do a little "tweaking" to shape the data we receive into whatever they want it to be.

ISP's should be big dumb pipes with minimal, protocol agnostic Quality of Service practices, anything else WILL be abused by the ISP's at some point to serve their own agendas.

Oh and mandatory limits for data logging and retention would be good as well, some middle ground like say six months or so would provide greater privacy for the digital world where privacy has been so far, sadly lacking.